It’s another day at the office.  You drag yourself out of bed only to countdown the minutes until you are off work. Believe me when I was a school teacher, I would stare at the clock dying to get out of the school at 3:03.  I couldn’t wait to come home to work on what I really loved to do.  That particular year I tried to balance work(paycheck) and my true passion—building my women-prenuer business in the event industry.  I made a huge shift and went part-time so I could concentrate on growing my hobby into a real business.  Finally with struggle I made the leap and QUIT my day job.  It wasn’t easy, people questioned what I was doing including my own husband.

For 7 years my family suffered because I was trying to take every job and service every client.  Yes,I wanted to grow my business, but I really wanted to show everyone around me that I was serious about making a living what I loved doing.  It wasn’t a pipe dream, it was up to me to make it happen.

Read the entire post »

Solopreneurs – There Are No Cinderella Stories!

In college basketball, the term, “Cinderella Story,” is often used for the underdog who comes out of nowhere to win the prize. It is a romantic idea about rising from the ashes and winning the prince or prize.

Ponder what it takes to win a championship or bring home a gold medal.

• How many early morning training sessions?
• Pulled muscles?
• Wins?
• Losses?

Read the entire post »

When I start talking to clients about Linked In — they usually resist because they think that Linked In is for people who work for big corporations or who are looking for a job.  I’ve found that Linked In is an excellent way to get more traffic to your site, reach a target audience and increase your conversion rate.

If you don’t know how to use LinkedIn and take advantage of its potential business-growing platform, you’ll be happy to hear it’s easy. First, make sure all of the headlines on your pages tap into the power of SEO marketing.

From your profile page on, make every word count. Don’t forget to add the blog application so that connections can also see your blog feed. Taking part in groups is a good idea, but building your own is even better.

Read the entire post »

If you use advertising or marketing to promote your business, you’re probably aware that response rates tend to be rather low with many types of advertising. Ten percent is a good response rate, but five percent is more realistic. And with the average close rate at around one percent, only a small percentage of leads are converted. That’s why small-business owners should focus not just on advertising and marketing but on following up on leads. After all, your advertising and marketing just gets people’s attention; convincing clients to actually work with you is the hard part.

Do you have a follow-up system?

I’ve talked with many business owners who assume the most important thing about marketing is a large advertising budget. But while advertising is good, more money does not necessarily equal more clients. If you advertise to 100 people and get 20 clients out of it, this is obviously much better than advertising to 1,000 people and only getting 10 clients out of it. So, this raises the big question: What can you do to increase the effectiveness of your advertising?

Read the entire post »

“You grow most in your areas of greatest strength. It sounds odd, but you will improve the most, be the most creative, be the most inquisitive, and bounce back the fastest in those areas where you have already shown some natural advantage over everyone else—your strengths.” - Marcus Buckingham

Here’s a little something that you might not know about me. I hate math. In fact, I really, really hate math. And, not only do I hate math, but I’m horrible at it as well.

I’m one of those moms you hear about that can only help her kids with their math homework through 4th grade. After that, they’re on their own.

So, it’s pretty obvious that I didn’t become a robotics engineer.

Read the entire post »

Scribd is a social media channel which allows you to share your published documents, .pdfs,  Powerpoints, etc.  You can upload materials for people to access for free — or you can sell on the site.   Scribd started out being for academics, but now it is used by small businesses, individuals, large companies. non profits, etc.  It is like giant virtual library.  And, it is easy to add your material to it.

Here are some reasons to consider submitting your documents to Scribd:

• Having your material available on Scribd is a good way to get more traffic to your site.

• Since many of the people who use Scribd are academics and large companies, submitting your material to Scribd is a great way to establish yourself as an expert.

Read the entire post »

One of my platinum clients asked a brilliant question this past weekend, “How do I take advantage of all of the different kinds of people I know in order to help my business. For example, I have friends that work in fashion, beauty and in retail stores. But I don’t know how to ask them to support my business since they aren’t exactly my ideal clients.”

Perhaps this shows up in your own business. You have many successful friends and family members, but you aren’t quite sure how to involve them in your business. But you know if you could just find a way to ask them to help, they would be more than happy to assist.

The key is to get creative.

Read the entire post »

Finding time to keep up with innovations in social media can be a full time task.  As long-time users of TwAitter, we here at Finding Time have appreciated the ability to offer scheduled tweets of our timely tips, time quotes, and other material so that we can share this great material with as many people as possible.

We recently received an e-mail from TwAitter letting us know that they are soon replacing this tried and true friend with a new and improved social media tool called Gremln.  In addition to the functionalities that TwAitter provided (which Gremln continues to offer) this new tool, as described by Kyle Welborn in his post on Tech.li, provides “… web-based software for businesses to engage in social networks and calculate the return on investment for the time and money they spend doing it. In addition, Gremln provides a consumer sentiment tool to help businesses understand how people are talking about them on the web.”

Read the entire post »

Before we move forward in your networking, we need to get really clear on who you want to meet. We’ll first focus on your ideal client. Now, to get clear on who your ideal client is, let’s first agree that there are several things that universally constitute an ideal client:

• Those you really enjoy working with

• Those who need your help, badly

• Those who recognize that working with you is essential

• Those who can easily be identified and contacted

Read the entire post »

1.  Create a landing page (a simple, one-page website or “squeeze page”).  Forget the blogs and multi-page websites.  Sure, they’re important… but not at this stage of how to grow your list.

Keep the landing page simple.  Focus only on one thing — the big benefit your subscriber will reap from claiming your free subscription gift when they opt into your email list.  Remove all distractions from your message — no other links or tabs; no tangents or unnecessary “persuasion”.

1.  Keep your tone in the landing page conversational.
2.  No exclamation marks; no words, phrases or sub heads in ALL-CAPS
3.  Use sub-heads and bullets to break up your text and make your page easy to read.  (Fact: internet surfers scan, not read.  They’re looking for words or phrases that catch their eye.)

Read the entire post »